In life, as in performance, we think our senses are right and true but so much is learned, habitual. Novel Formats aims to interrupt these patterns through novelty, immediacy, risk, and real time human connection.
Novel Formats is a seven-part performance cycle created by dance artist Rachel Bernsen. Each brings together artists across multiple disciplines and in different permutations to engage with a proposed theme and minimal choreographic structures. The work is rooted in improvisation and dependent on the individual artists’ interpretation and the deliciously unpredictable dynamic of the group. It challenges us to attune to each moment as a continuous present, undoing reliance on memory and learned behavior.
Novel Formats #3: Loop is a quartet with dance artist Julian Barnett, electric guitarist Evan Patrick, vocalist and interdisciplinary artist Jean Carla Rodea, and Rachel Bernsen. With light design by Chico Eastridge.
Other NF collaborators so far include dance artist Ellen Smith Ahern, cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum, vocalist Kyoko Kitamura, visual artist Lindsay Packer, cellist Tomeka Reid, violist / electronic artist Mac Waters, dramaturg Rachel Kauder Nalebuff.
Novel Formats is made possible in part by support from JAM-Junction Arts & Media, NEFA’s New England Dance Fund, and from individual donors.